


An Angel Self-Defined

by zerodaryls



Series: Gendery Bendery Good Omens [1]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: (Crowley loves him back obviously but we'll get to that later in the series), Agender Aziraphale (Good Omens), Aziraphale Loves Crowley (Good Omens), Gen, Gender Dysphoria, Gender Identity, Genderfluid Crowley (Good Omens), He/Him Pronouns For Aziraphale (Good Omens), He/Him Pronouns For Crowley (Good Omens), Misgendering, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-07
Updated: 2020-07-07
Packaged: 2021-03-04 20:27:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,875
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25122379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zerodaryls/pseuds/zerodaryls
Summary: Aziraphale expresses discomfort with the fact that he's always assumed to be a man, and wants a word to describe his lack of gender. Crowley helps.
Relationships: Aziraphale & Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Series: Gendery Bendery Good Omens [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1819816
Comments: 12
Kudos: 70





	An Angel Self-Defined

**Author's Note:**

> Just a cute lil convo between a couple of gendery bendery babes. Saw some binarist bullshit on Insta the other day and wrote this out of pure spite.

“Right, you’ve been sour all day,” said Crowley as he plopped down on the sofa. Aziraphale had gone to lunch with him and invited him back to the shop afterwards, but even the angel had to admit he wasn’t very good company. “What’s on your mind?”

“Humans and their assumptions,” Aziraphale grumbled as he took a seat in his favorite chair. He had been wanting to pout all day, in fact, but had waited until Crowley asked to finally get things off his chest.

“What humans and what assumptions?”

“Oh, just about all of them. Assumptions about… I don’t know. Gender and sex and sexuality. I’m growing quite tired of it.”

Crowley quirked a brow. “Does this have anything to do with ‘just about all’ humans and their assumptions about _you,_ specifically?”

Aziraphale nodded. “Most seem to assume I’m homosexual male,” he complained.

“No one says ‘homosexual’ anymore, angel.”

“Well, queer then.”

Crowley quirked a brow.

“I know it was a slur, but they’ve reclaimed it!” Aziraphale said defensively. “Or, well, many have, at least. I suppose it’s not for everyone.”

“I know _that_ , s’just more modern than I would’ve thought you’d have known to say.”

“Well, I do try to keep up with the times.”

Crowley ran his gaze up and down the angel’s outfit and gave him a pointed look.

“Oh, you know what I mean!”

Crowley smirked.

“Oh, stop it! Anyway, I was trying to express my frustration with always being assumed to be… a queer man, r-rather than… Oh, I don’t know. It’s not that I’m at all bothered by the idea of being thought of as such, mind you, I’m just tired of that always being the _assumption_.”

Crowley shrugged. “S’probably ‘cause you’re so flamboyant.”

Aziraphale shot a glare at the demon and said, his voice high and defensive, “I’m not flamboyant!”

Crowley gave him a pointed look.

“I’m _not!_ I’m refined!”

The pointed look grew into an amused smirk.

“Crowley!” Aziraphale continued to pout.

“Angel, I don’t know how to tell you this, but you are a fussy little thing. Comes off as very, y’know, _out and proud_. Or something.”

Aziraphale huffed and looked away, his pout deepening.

“S’not a bad thing.”

Silence.

Crowley chuckled. “You know you’re proving my point, though, with all the pouting.”

“I’m not pouting! I don’t pout!”

“Mm, no, ‘course not.”

Aziraphale thinned his lips, then conceded. “Well, even so, ‘flamboyant’ or not, people shouldn’t _assume_.”

“I won’t argue with that. Doesn’t do anyone any good, y’know, promoting stereotypes and all.” Crowley shifted with a sigh. “What should people assume, then?”

“I’m sorry?”

“If they’re not assuming you to be a ‘homosexual male’,” Crowley teased, earning a pursed-lipped frown from Aziraphale, “what should they think of you as?”

“Well, that’s just it. I…”

“What?”

“I… I don’t know. It’s a bit silly.”

This only seemed to further Crowley’s interest. He raised his brows expectantly and gestured broadly as if to say, _So? Spill!_

Aziraphale fussed with his hands for a moment. “I don’t know. It isn’t something an angel should care so much about.”

Crowley threw his head back and drawled, “Come _on_.”

“I want a word for myself,” Aziraphale blurted out.

“What?”

“A… A label, if you will.”

“For what?”

“My… well, gender, I suppose. Or lack thereof. I-if there is such a thing, you know. I’ve heard the humans have come up with quite a bit more terminology to define themselves a-and I, well, I want one.”

Crowley leaned back against the sofa, spreading himself out comfortably. “What brought this on?”

“I… Oh, I don’t know. I’m… As I said, I truly am a bit tired of being assumed to be a man. The queer bit is just fine with me; I suppose I must be, really, since I’m only attracted to, er… o-others of, erm, indeterminate gender, I suppose…” Aziraphale trailed off, blushing and pointedly not looking at the demon across from him. “Anyway, I’m certainly not heterosexual. So, if my, er, ‘flamboyance’ leads people to think that I’m, well, queer, then, well, that’s fine with me. It’s the _maleness_ that upsets me. A-and so, even if others aren’t aware, I want a word for myself, for my own sake. To, ah…”

“To give you a sense of self when others try to take it away with their assumptions,” Crowley supplied. “Yeah, I follow. Got one of those for myself. A word, I mean.”

Aziraphale’s brows shot up. “Oh?”

Crowley gave a short nod. Then, when Aziraphale continued to look at him expectantly, he said, “Genderfluid.”

“Which means…?”

“Means… I dunno, bouncing between genders. Being all… gendery bendery.”

“Gendery… bendery,” Aziraphale echoed flatly.

Crowley just shrugged.

“I see. So you, ah, ‘bounce’ between feeling like a man or a woman, then?”

“Er, I mean, yeah, I mean sort of. Some people who use that word for themselves do, yeah. But not everyone. And not me. Not really.” Crowley shifted. “I never fully feel like a man or a woman ‘cause, y’know, s’a human thing. But I feel like, errrr, I dunno, a man-shaped _thing_ sometimes. Or womanly. Or whatever. Neither. Both. Depends.”

“Neither?” Aziraphale sounded cautiously hopeful. “Is there a, um, a specific word for when you feel like neither _all_ of the time?”

Crowley nodded. “Yeah. There’s a few of ‘em, actually, last I heard.”

Aziraphale frowned. “Why would one need more than one?”

“I think it’s more like there’s more than one to choose from,” Crowley said, then frowned. “Er, no, that’s not it. You can have more than one for yourself. I mean, when asked–and I _have_ been asked a few times; youths of the day are less likely to assume, so, you know, they catch me in makeup or something and they might ask my pronouns.”

“And what do you tell them?”

Crowley shrugged. “Whatever I feel at the time. Usually just say I don’t care. S’nice that they ask, though.”

“Do you… I mean, would you like me to make any adjustments to how I refer to you?”

“Nah, ‘he’ always works for me, no matter how I’m, er, presenting, I guess. I _really_ don’t care.”

“No, I don’t think I do, either.”

“Anyway, I was saying, if I’m asked, I just stick with ‘genderfluid’ as a descriptor, usually. But, technically I fall under the category of nonbinary, so. That works, too. Or genderqueer. Or just the general ‘trans’, y’know. All those words work for me.”

Aziraphale nodded to himself, quiet for a moment. Then, “You said ‘genderqueer’, and I suppose that’s simple enough to understand. Like ‘queer’ in sexuality, but with, well, gender, clearly. A sort of umbrella term for being outside the, ah, ‘norm’, in that sense, I would guess.”

“You’d guess right. Pretty much sums it up.”

“But… You also said ‘nonbinary’. As in… not… binary?”

Crowley blinked exactly twice. “Yeah, that’d be it.”

Aziraphale pursed his lips at the slight condescension, but continued his questioning. “This ‘binary’ being…?”

“The gender binary. Male and female. Er, man and woman. Y’know, Adam ’n Eve.”

“Ah.”

“Yeah.”

“And so… nonbinary would mean… neither man nor woman?”

Crowley nodded slowly.

“Well, I suppose that’s accurate, then.”

“For me or for you?”

“Well, both. You’ve already identified yourself as such. And I suppose I… I suppose I am, too. Nonbinary, I mean. Neither man nor woman. I don’t… I don’t feel that I have a sense of gender at _all_ , really.”

“Agender’s another one for that.”

“Agender?”

Crowley nodded. “Means you don’t, y’know, have a gender. What you just said, basically.”

“Ah. Agender…,” Aziraphale said slowly, as though he were tasting the word in his mouth. He smiled brightly. “I think I like that.”

Crowley smiled. “Yeah?”

“Yes. I think I… I think I’ll use that one. To, ah, self-identify, or however you word it. I’m agender,” he declared cheerily.

Crowley echoed the angel’s smile with his own. “Suits you.”

“Thank you,” Aziraphale said, beaming. “Genderfluid suits you, what with your hips and all.”

Crowley cocked a brow. “My hips?”

Aziraphale blanched, his eyes wide as though he were a deer caught in headlights. “You… They… Well, they _swing_ when you…” He huffed at Crowley’s widening grin. “Oh, hush. I’m simply trying to say you move quite fluidly. It was meant to be a, a play on words, or something.”

“Uh-huh,” Crowley said through his grin.

“Crowley!”

“You can say you think I’m sexy, angel, I won’t tell.”

Aziraphale tutted. “Please. You’re being ridiculous.”

Crowley cackled a bit, then gathered himself to ask, “So, any changes to how you wanna be referred to?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, you said you don’t care about pronouns. So, sticking with the usual ‘he’ sound good?”

“Oh, that. Yes.”

“And other gendered words…?”

“Such as?”

“I don’t know. Say I’m talking about you to a stranger. Now, before, I might have said, ‘There’s a man I know,’ and, y’know, gone on from there. Are we doing away with that kind of wording?”

Aziraphale considered this for a moment. Then, “You know, I don’t think I care _how_ you refer to me if I’m not around to be bothered by it.”

“It’s a respect thing, angel. I’m trying to respect you. And, if that person should ever _meet_ you, then _they_ know how to refer to you, too. Y’know, they’d be following my lead. So, how should I lead?”

“Oh. Well, then. I suppose being as neutral as possible would be preferable. You could say I’m ‘someone’ you know. Or, simply ‘a person’ you know.”

Crowley nodded. Then, “‘Course the moment I say ‘he’ they’re going to be assuming you’re a man, anyway.”

“Yes, they probably will,” Aziraphale sighed. “I do wish they’d stop doing that.”

Crowley chuckled. “They’ll get there, I think. They’re on their way. Maybe a few centuries from now we won’t even have to talk about this stuff.”

“I certainly hope so.”

They spent the next hour or so chatting about non-gender-related things, but Aziraphale was internally glowing with pride at his new sense of self. Or, rather, to finally have a way to _describe_ his sense of self. He was feeling quite cheery by the time Crowley was ready to head back to his place, and nearly invited him to stay longer. Then he remembered he’d already created an awkward situation for himself at least twice that afternoon, and really didn’t want to give himself the chance to do it again. Now that he was finally free to simply _be_ with Crowley without having to constantly look over his shoulder, the last thing he wanted was to ruin it by admitting that he wanted to, well, _be_ with Crowley in an entirely different sense. So, silently resigned, he nodded and agreed they should call it an early evening.

“Right,” said Crowley, standing from the sofa with a sigh. “Well, goodnight, you phenomenally genderless individual.” He shot Aziraphale a cheeky grin and a wink before he turned around and made his way out of the shop. He seemed to be making a point of swinging his hips, embodying that fluidity the angel’d mentioned earlier.

Aziraphale snorted. “Quite.” He sighed, and, although the demon was no longer in range of hearing him, said, “Goodnight, Crowley. Thank you.”

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first part of a series that's gonna get uhhhhh explicit. Just layin' the groundwork for Aziraphale to explore his gender and his body and uhhh _Crowley's_ body and y'know, all that fun, ineffable stuff. But I wanted this one to just focus on Aziraphale's identity and not so much his relationship with Crowley.


End file.
